Spike Jonze talks new film ‘Her,’ looking at technology and relationships

"Hello, Rob." The voice at the other end of the phone line sounds deep and professional. It's writer-director Spike Jonze, whose new movie, "Her," has already topped a number of critics' lists and is nominated for a number of Golden Globes, including best musical/comedy and best screenplay.

When I congratulate him on the film, he says, "Thanks." His voice goes up several notes. "I was just trying to sound mature and impressive with a deeper voice. I don't know if it worked, but I don't think I can do that for more than 10 seconds anyway."

So this is the guy who has given us one of the most provocative and entertaining movies of the year.

In addition to "Her," Jonze has helped keep the "Jackass" franchise going. His latest collaboration on the prankster movies with Johnny Knoxville, "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa," proved to be another hit. It seems like a contradiction, but it goes with Jonze's eclecticism and wide range of interests.

"Her," which opens Friday in Utah, is only Jonze's fourth directed feature in some 15 years. His first two — "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" — were trippy, often brilliant collaborations with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. On his third, he worked with novelist Dave Eggers and Maurice Sendak to turn the children's writer's brief classic "Where the Wild Things Are" into a full-length movie. The result was interesting, but the film only did so-so at the box office.

Jonze's new movie is his first as sole writer and director. Set in a Los Angeles of the not-too-distant future, it stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a man who falls in love with the disembodied voice and personality of his computer's operating system. Phoenix' performance in the film has earned him a Golden Globe nod for best actor in a musical or comedy.

The OS, named Samantha, is voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who sounds sexy, young, playful and curious — the perfect being for getting Theo out of the funk he's been in since his breakup with his wife (Rooney Mara).

The sly concept could have little more than satire, but there is something more real about Theo and Samantha in "Her" than any romantic comedy I can think of. It's also funnier and more heartfelt than most. Given that couples now break up in emails and texts, and that some people relate more to a video game than the person next to them in Starbucks, the idea of someone falling in love with an OS personality doesn't seem so far-fetched. In fact, in the movie, most greet Theo's announcement of his new cyber-girlfriend with barely a shrug.

Jonze creates a gentle, evolved and clean L.A. of the future. About the only thing that seems a little unbelievable is the functional and easily accessible metro system that the filmmaker envisions for the City of Angels.

When I first start to ask the 44-year-old filmmaker about "Her," I find myself lost in a complicated question about technology and relationships, and finally tell him that I was trying to ask three questions at once.

Jonze laughs and says that is what the movie is doing.

"I don't have a simple answer to these questions because the movie is asking them, and there are no simple answers," he says. "I think technology is doing so many things to us. It's helping us connect and preventing us from connecting. I think that's the setting for the movie."

At one point we talk about how relationships fail because one person grows and another doesn't or because people grow in different directions. A while after we moved on from that subject, Jonze moves back.

"I forget what you said that made me think this, but it's about Samantha being her own person. Whether she was human or not, this is a trajectory that she is going through and experiencing," he says. And then he speculates that perhaps in a couple hundred years, artificial intelligence will be its own species and have its own consciousness.

"I wonder what they'd think of the movie if they can still see it," he says. "I hope they would like it, that they'd find it empathetic."

This leads to speculation about how human humans will be with advances in nanotechnology or the creation of "an integrated silicon circuit with the mechanical properties of skin," as described in a recent New Yorker article.

While Jonze's persona is well-known, he keeps his private life pretty private. His real name is Adam Spiegel; he was born in Maryland and is related to the Spiegel catalog family. As a kid, he adopted the name Spike Jonze while competing in skateboarding and BMX events. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles and worked at a biker magazine. In 1992, he shot skateboarding footage for a Sonic Youth video.

That was his breakthrough in filmmaking. Eventually he directed music videos for the likes of R.E.M., Puff Daddy, the Chemical Brothers and Björk — as well as TV ads for Nike, Sprite, Nissan and Coca-Cola. He also was acting, most notably as a redneck in David O. Russell's 1999 black comedy "Three Kings." That was the same year of "Being John Malkovich" and his marriage to fellow filmmaker Sofia Coppola. They divorced in 2003 and Jonze hasn't spoken publicly about it since.

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